I am Keroc AMA

Keroc

Hey all,

As things have been a little quiet lately, I thought I'd throw up a homage to Oleis (RIP) and start a thread where you can ask me almost anything about the game, or anything about me in particular.

War and bashing changes will be difficult for me to answer as Razmael is the lead developer on them, but everything else should be mostly fair game.

Here's some short things about me:
I live in Australia.
I've been part of the Pools for 6-7 years.
I've been part of Aetolia for 13 years!
I've had a hand in shaping almost all our classes in some manner or another.
I love competitive games and play Dota 2 and Smash Bros to get my fix.
Unlike Oleis, have no pets.

Xandren

uhm..what happened to Oleis? I apologize if I am asking a stupid question, so here's one that might pertain to you personally:

What was your favorite memory from Aetolia? As a mortal? As a Godmin? I'm sure there are two sets of favorites for that list. Helps narrow it down. I wanna hear some funny tales, and maybe have some ammo against older players to laugh (at) with them about amusing silliness in the past!

Serrice

Melee or Smash4?

Brawl or ProjectM?

Red Fox or Blue Fox?

Vaskar

Why do vampires still have these ridiculous daytime penalties after all this time?

Yes, I know, blah blah blah RP REASONS blah blah blah, but penalties that strong for RP purposes are ridiculous. Using the class at a high level seems to basically require the purchase of the 500cr sunbane amulet and the 100cr darkness artifact. Roughly half of the RL day is comprised of periods of in-game daylight, and without those artifacts you're sort of screwed if you want to bash or PvP outside during those periods. No other class faces anything like this at all, and vampires face all of those penalties even when they change profession.

The current penalties ensure that I never play/go vampire, which is a shame because Aetolia's big draw is "holy crap vampires!". It seems like such a singularly appalling design decision, and I can't understand why they're still around after more than a decade.

Serrice

Can Raz cook chicken yet?

Keroc

Xandren said:

uhm..what happened to Oleis? I apologize if I am asking a stupid question, so here's one that might pertain to you personally:

What was your favorite memory from Aetolia? As a mortal? As a Godmin? I'm sure there are two sets of favorites for that list. Helps narrow it down. I wanna hear some funny tales, and maybe have some ammo against older players to laugh (at) with them about amusing silliness in the past!

Oleis picked up a full time job that takes up most of his time. He's still around lurking in the various corners of the forums.

My personal favourite memory as a player would've been the Deepwater Alliance vs. the Renegade Legion war (BL, Shallam, Duiran vs old Ashtan, with a sprinkling of Spinesreach). Those were some crazy days where logging into the game resulted in a near instant brazier tattoo being used against you in the hopes that you hadn't touched cloak yet. Back then levels were much more difficult to obtain and hold onto - I think I lost something like 30 odd levels dropping from level 60 to level 30 just from trying to participate in the war. Never deterred me though, I would plan out all the strange little things my skills could do to counteract them and feel smug with myself when they couldn't succeed in killing me from a range.

As a god it's a little tougher, but one of the more silly stories I have was running Survivor events before they were official events. I would pick and choose a bunch of mobiles from the game, then move around the arena to drop them on players while calling out each wave by hand. I had a huge surplus still in my inventory when the game ended, and as luck would have I disconnected in the Spectator room right after the game while everyone was still there. As none of the mobiles were considered 'personal' items they all fell out of my inventory and killed everyone there. I got yelled at a lot for that one.

Hard for me to tell a story about a player in specific, most of them have left at this point, aside from Razmael.

Serrice said:

Melee or Smash4?

Brawl or ProjectM?

Red Fox or Blue Fox?

Hard to say, I like Melee and Smash4 for different reasons! Melee is great fun for waveshining and tech, but Smash4 has online play and better overall diversity. I would probably bank more on Melee though, I hate defensive play.

Project M, no question. Tripping sux.

Red Fox for sure.

Vaskar said:

Why do vampires still have these ridiculous daytime penalties after all this time?

Yes, I know, blah blah blah RP REASONS blah blah blah, but penalties that strong for RP purposes are ridiculous. Using the class at a high level seems to basically require the purchase of the 500cr sunbane amulet and the 100cr darkness artifact. Roughly half of the RL day is comprised of periods of in-game daylight, and without those artifacts you're sort of screwed if you want to bash or PvP outside during those periods. No other class faces anything like this at all, and vampires face all of those penalties even when they change profession.

The current penalties ensure that I never play/go vampire, which is a shame because Aetolia's big draw is "holy crap vampires!". It seems like such a singularly appalling design decision, and I can't understand why they're still around after more than a decade.

We're definitely reviewing it as part of report 2176. A big part of it was that vampires, at least, used to be an incredibly powerful class back in it's heyday. They had massive base resistances to all types of elemental damage, no cooldown or prevention on purify, an ability that acted as a restore salve, and some of the more ridiculous abilities like the first inception of indifference, good old yellow/black bile, and original lure. And then Bloodborn came along with 100% hidden whispers, serration slash, and plus more.

I think it's only really been since the revamp to the profession and the addition of the noon sun that people have started to criticize it heavily.

Serrice said:

Can Raz cook chicken yet?

According to Raz he cooks chicken all the time. Personally I don't believe him.

Jensen

Is it true that Oleis had to step down because he is in fact a cat, and just convinces a human to code for him.  This so called "job" is just a cover up!!!!  I smell artifice

Keroc

Jensen said:

Is it true that Oleis had to step down because he is in fact a cat, and just convinces a human to code for him.  This so called "job" is just a cover up!!!!  I smell artifice

At the very least I believe him to be some sort of advanced AI. He had incredible patience and a nack for words.

Valingar

Why Dota and not LoL?

Alexina

If there is one feature you could magically add to Aetolia, regardless of how big or small, what would it be?

Keroc

Valingar said:

Why Dota and not LoL?

I honestly haven't played much of LoL to give it a real opinion. I started on Dota 1 due to friends, swapped to Heroes of Newerth, then moved onto Dota 2 when it came out. I definitely felt like the laning phase was a lot more boring when I did play it, the minigame between last hitting, denying, and pulling is a lot of fun in Dota. I would have to play it more to have a solid opinion otherwise.

Keroc

Alexina said:

If there is one feature you could magically add to Aetolia, regardless of how big or small, what would it be?

This question is so hard to answer. There's a lot of things I would love to do, but my time often gets spent entirely on class work. More PvE dungeons with puzzles and big, bad bosses. A brand new newbie intro would be great. More city features and arena games. A more complex and interesting endgame. More quest skills like Panda stance. A bigger world with more things to see. It's rough, sometimes I want to do all the things but I have to limit my time or I'd never leave the desk. I'm an honest-to-god game designer at heart, nothing makes me happier then watching people have fun with the things I create.

Ishin

@Keroc - Ah the days of DA vs RL. I remember those, back when I was on Resiak. Talk about a pain in the rear, those guys. Best touch that cloak tattoo on login. Enter username: Resiak enter password: *******;touch cloak

Oleis

My scheme has been revealed! I must flee!






(send catnip)

Toz

I had lunch with @Oleis, can confirm he's a cat. I suppose I should have noticed when he ordered a bowl of milk, but it took the hairball for me to catch on.

@Keroc, from a programmer standpoint how much do you like Rapture's engine? Do you have a favorite coding language that you wish the game was coded in? What are your thoughts on Lua? And for that matter, what client do you use?

Draiman

Do you still have a functioning/up to date system?

Sciomancer or Ascendril?

Have you considered revamping a current dsl style class or designing a new one that a.) Can't lock and b.) Achieves their kill condition in some other manner than a deform/soul poison/blood poison style mechanic (ie, aff overload > kill)

Aishia

Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Jensen

Aishia said:

Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

What?

Rasani

Who do I have to bribe for bulk smelting?

Serrice

Do you play other IREs?

Hadrak

Are you the King of Dota?

Pypo

Are you secretly a representative of a future end-game race of sentient Slime-monsters?

I almost wish sometimes there was a race which mimics all other races by forming a 'fake shell' to represent other races. Like in dark souls 3 when you open that chest that turns out to be a mimic trap an it gobbles you up!

Keroc

Toz said:

@Keroc, from a programmer standpoint how much do you like Rapture's engine? Do you have a favorite coding language that you wish the game was coded in? What are your thoughts on Lua? And for that matter, what client do you use?

Honestly, Rapture is pretty damn rock solid. There's rarely been a moment that I'm frustrated with what Rapture offers, it's usually oldcode(tm) causing me grief. If there's any specific instance where I want to shake the Rapture cage in anger, it's when I need to make use of decimals as it has no floats. The elo/ranking system for Sect and some aspects of the weather system were a real pain.

Lua is really great. Probably one of my favourite coding languages for ease of use, yet still offering a lot of power and flexibility for the programmer. Definitely think it is A++ material for scripting with MUDs. Nothing bad to say here.

I'm an old school scrub and use MUSHclient. It's what I grew up on and it still manages to keep up with Mudlet and probably outperforms CMud. I get a little frustrated with it's GMCP implementation, but it's otherwise dandy.

Draiman said:

Do you still have a functioning/up to date system?

Sciomancer or Ascendril?

Have you considered revamping a current dsl style class or designing a new one that a.) Can't lock and b.) Achieves their kill condition in some other manner than a deform/soul poison/blood poison style mechanic (ie, aff overload > kill)

I do, yep. It is relatively up to date and I use it for play testing. I haven't really coded match up specific functionality other then the necessities.

Old school Magi all the way. You can't make me choose between those impostors and my first love~

The Cabalist revamp is looking to work this way. It has a madness mechanic based around certain afflictions, but it is still in the design phase.

Rasani said:

Who do I have to bribe for bulk smelting?

Razmael realllly loves chocolate. You might be able to bribe him if he has the time.

Serrice said:

Do you play other IREs?

I dabbed in Imperian really briefly, back when it was all the craze. Syssin with traps sounded kinda fun. I never really strayed far from Aetolia though. The most I ever played another mud was either Arctic or this DBZ mud which had pretty cool fight mechanics.

Hadrak said:

Are you the King of Dota?

The one true king and rightful heir.

Keroc

Pypo said:

Are you secretly a representative of a future end-game race of sentient Slime-monsters?

I almost wish sometimes there was a race which mimics all other races by forming a 'fake shell' to represent other races. Like in dark souls 3 when you open that chest that turns out to be a mimic trap an it gobbles you up!

Are you confusing me for Trigru? I'm down for a slime-monster race, Hadrak would probably hate me but it make for some hilarious RP. Gloop gloop.

Serrice

omfg a DBZ mud! I played one when I was in middle school and boy, was that a whole lot of fun. You even got points for 'RPing' fights in this public channel and could buy swanky restrings and stuff.

Keroc

Serrice said:

omfg a DBZ mud! I played one when I was in middle school and boy, was that a whole lot of fun. You even got points for 'RPing' fights in this public channel and could buy swanky restrings and stuff.

I played it with Razmael, Exodus, Desian, plus a few others I can't really remember mpw. I only ever beat Freiza, but I think Raz beat Cell. Mechanics were very similiar to MKO when it opened, in that you'd have a delayed attack aimed at you, and then you'd have to either parry or dodge depending on the attack. Was really cool.

Xandren

When are Treants going to be released as a playable race?

#FREETHETREANTSASAPLAYABLERACE

#PLANTPEOPLERULE

...ugh..I suddenly have an urge to punch myself in the face. Excuse me

Ishin

@Keroc - When are you going to get a cool avatar pic like @Hadrak? You could totally be the Egg, bro.

Xandren

@Keroc - Bro, why hasn't my voltorb laid an egg yet?

Keroc

Xandren said:

When are Treants going to be released as a playable race?

#FREETHETREANTSASAPLAYABLERACE

#PLANTPEOPLERULE

...ugh..I suddenly have an urge to punch myself in the face. Excuse me

Duiran may take the treehugger thing too literally if we did that. Although honestly I think a tree race would be cool.

Ishin said:

@Keroc - When are you going to get a cool avatar pic like @Hadrak? You could totally be the Egg, bro.

The egg?

Xandren said:

@Keroc - Bro, why hasn't my voltorb laid an egg yet?

You gotta find it one hell sexy Ditto to mate with. Or teach it Egg bomb, that counts right?

Ishin

@Keroc - ...the disappoint. I shall show you The Egg.